Matts Meanderings

This weekend, going to head up for a nice weekend away in the Lakes District (north west corner of England). So, a weekend of relaxing and hikes - should be good.

Then, the following week, Dan, Rob & Matt arrive, and I'm starting my holidays.

The vague plan is: start of with a slow drive up to Liverpool, stopping off at a few places on the way (so Dan can get his England fix). Then staying few days around Liverpool for many commiseration drinks before Andrew slips on the ceremonial shackles, and marries Cath... (love ya, Cath ).

On the 3rd of Sept, going to fly to Berlin with Charlie and Matt, for a few days there, then heading south. Hopefully going to hit Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, Chesky Krumlov, and a few other cool places round there. Hopefully make it as far as Croatia, but not counting on it. Only traveling for 3 weeks, so don't want to rush it too much.

Should be fun!

In four days, I hit the 2 years of being in the UK. Damn, that time's gone fast.

But, the thing that's gonna make it interesting is that Andrew is buggering off. He's getting married (to the loverly (cough) Cath) on the 1st of Sept, and then heading to South America (for three months) and Australia (for a minimum of six months).

So, that leaves me pretty much on my own here. There's still Andrea, but pretty much everyone else is friends that I've made here. Was easy when I came over, as I had two really good mates here, but Paul left a while back, and now Andrew's out of here.

Add to the fact that I just found out that Shawn is leaving too - damn.

So, from here on in, its really down to seeing if I can survive without those anchors. Yep, the next 6 months is going to be interesting.

Been looking into some asp.net and atlas stuff recently, and I've really enjoyed it. Even was playing with some virtual earth mapping stuff the other day, which was very cool. It was so easy, but still so powerful. Its takes away so much that you have to do manually, and lets you focus on actually getting things done, rather than fighting with plumbing all the time.

Its kinda got me back into coding in my own time again - its been a long time since I've wanted to do that. Watching the demos and screencasts, the possibilities that it allows is amazing. Really gets you motivated and excited about coding again - a feeling that I've been missing for ages.

Compare that to what I have to do at work. Some of the things that I can do in asp.net in half an hour would take weeks in asp, and then it would be nowhere near as maintainable, or secure.

Given the distinct lack of progress on, well, anything that would actually improve morale at work... Well, hopefully my holiday gives me some motivation (either that, or my boss has an epiphany)...

Hannah's made me try and grow the tree seedlings that were handed out at the Ben & Jerry's Sundae in the park concert, as part of their seed the world program.

Well, I promise I'll try and look after it - no guarantees they'll survive though. After all, I have managed to kill quite a few cactii in the past...

PS: Kudos to Ben & Jerry's for doing something like this. Granted, a big chunk of it is marketing, but its still really good...

PPS: What should I call it? I'm going for Hubert at the moment... (then again, there was about a dozen seeds... Hubert I through Hubert XII?)

Been reading about, watching a few screencasts, and even doing a bit of Atlas development, with ASP.NET.

Damn, I'm loving it! Its going to make life sooo much easier.

Now, just have to get away from doing the ancient (and extremely painful) ASP that they make me do at work...

In the last week, I've been to 3 gigs/concerts:

Ben & Jerry's Sundae in the Park Concert:

Paperadio Gig:

The Cat Empire Gig:

Life's hard sometimes

Oh, and in terms of how good they were - well, in order they were, okay, good, and ace. The Cat Empire were really good - would've been better if I'd known more of the songs, but still really really good.

A bit belated, but so true...

Funny too.

In other news an Australian man was arrested in Italy for an assault on a local man following the football match between Australia and Italy. Witnesses say the Australian man was 20m away when the incident happened. The victim suffered a fractured skull, a cardiac arrest and has developed diabetes as a result of the incident. He is expected to recover in a few minutes.

Send the main bits of my new computer back to the supplier, and it turns out there was a fault with one of the items. So, it wasn't me! I'm not incompetent! (well, not completely, at least)...

Just have to wait until the new bits arrive now...